The present invention relates to electrophoresis and relates in particular to a gel mold apparatus, a method of fabricating the mold apparatus and a method of molding a wedge shaped electrophoresis gel slab.
Many gel slabs are molded horizontally as shown and described in U.S. Pat. Nos. 4,151,065 and 4,234,400, both entitled HORIZONTAL SLAB GEL ELECTROPHORESIS and both issued to Kaplan et al. on Apr. 24, 1979 Nov. 18, 1980, respectively.
While horizontal gel slab arrangements are operative, it is desirable to mold slabs vertically for optimum results.
In particular, it is desirable to mold gels vertically with increasing thickness of gel slab from top to bottom simulating an inverted wedge or inverted V-shape configuration in cross-section.
Since vertical gel slabs are molded between flat glass mold plates with a peripheral gasket or spacer sandwiched between the plates, difficultly has been encountered in developing a mold which produces a relatively thin gel slab having a greater thickness at the bottom than the thickness at the top.
One prior art technique has been to use the customary flat glass mold plates with a thin tapered spacer.
Since the spacers are of the order of 0.2 to 1.0 millimeter in thickness and the taper can be as slight as 0.014 millimeters per running centimeter, one can see that it is very difficult to prepare such spacers accurately.